Ten years later, casino debate still on the table

Jim Suhr

Monday, June 21, 2004 | 10:49 a.m.

ST. LOUIS -- Ten years ago, in May 1994, the Admiral and the Station Casino in St. Charles debuted as the state's first two riverboat casinos. Missouri gaming sites now number 11, with more likely.

The passage of time hasn't softened the debate.

A statewide casino trade group says the gaming riverboats are among the state's chief taxpayers and employers, with more than 10,000 workers -- 86 percent of them Missourians -- earning $310 million a year in wages, tips and benefits.

The Missouri Riverboat Gaming Association says the more than $286 million in gaming taxes and admission fees paid to the state in fiscal 2003 alone is nearly double what the 60,000 other Missouri corporations combined paid on business profits and assets.

And casinos have funneled more than $1.275 billion into the state's education coffers, as required under a constitutional provision that all gambling tax revenue be spent only on elementary or secondary education.

"Few Missourians know what gaming has done for the state, much less what it has done for their hometown or school district," Kendra Miner, marketing chief of the Kansas City area's Argosy Casino, said in a statement released by the gaming association.

Anti-casino forces have found little to revel in, believing gambling addictions have risen sharply since Missouri's casinos first arrived. And they say repealing the $500 loss limit -- something the casinos have lobbied for -- would just worsen things.

Gambling opponents call that limit needed to help protect compulsive gamblers and others from huge losses. And, they say, the limit was part of the deal when voters approved gambling in 1992.

The Missouri Gaming Commission concedes in a statement "there is a certain percentage of people who cannot use this product in a responsible manner." Since its debut in 1996, more than 7,000 people have permanently barred themselves from casinos under the state's voluntary exclusion system for problem gamblers.

To Keith Spare, a certified counselor of compulsive gamblers, the available statewide hotline and Web site giving problem gamblers and families information and options is "an excellent foundational start."

"I can't say how wonderful it is to have those," said Spare, chief of the Missouri Council on Problem Gambling Concerns Inc. "Now that we have a foundation, we have a framework and need to finish the rest of the house," bolstering the referral network and more pressing public education about gambling's dark side.

"The moral responsibility for the state is to have a good, complete safety net," Spare said. "If there's going to be more gaming, there's got to be more safety and protection."